The Guardian: Arundhati Roy on India’s COVID catastrophe

“Let’s try and not be a cry baby … so far we have ensured that no one in the country was left without oxygen,” said Tusha Mehta, India's solicitor-general.

It’s hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain. By Arundhati Roy

During a particularly polarising election campaign in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, waded into the fray to stir things up even further.

From a public podium, he accused the state government – which was led by an opposition party – of pandering to the Muslim community by spending more on Muslim graveyards (kabristans) than on Hindu cremation grounds (shamshans).

With his customary braying sneer, in which every taunt and barb rises to a high note mid-sentence before it falls away in a menacing echo, he stirred up the crowd. “If a kabristan is built in a village, a shamshan should also be constructed there,” he said.

“Shamshan! Shamshan!” the mesmerised, adoring crowd echoed back.

Perhaps he is happy now that the haunting image of the flames rising from the mass funerals in India’s cremation grounds is making the front page of international newspapers.

And that all the kabristans and shamshans in his country are working properly, in direct proportion to the populations they cater for, and far beyond their capacities.

Read more...

You may also like:

COVID-19 and the double mutation: At the heart of India's coronavirus firestorm

Interview with Indian novelist Arundhati Roy: "India is much more dangerous than it was ten years ago"

Dispute about the temple to Lord Ram in Ayodhya: The end of India's post-colonial consensus

Arundhati Roy's "Azadi": Narendra Modi is pushing Indian society to the brink